7 ms·
The top 1% pay something like half our taxes. What share do you think is fairer?
by eanzenberg 6y ago
The top 1% pay something like half our taxes. What share do you think is fairer?
- justicezyx 6y agoHow about equally to their share of national income?
- kalleboo 6y agoIt should be in proportion to how many % of the wealth they own. So more like 90%
- eanzenberg 6y agoThe 1% earn 36% of the income[1] as of 2016, and pay 37% of the taxes[2]. Everyone happy now? [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide... [2] https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...
- macintux 6y agoIncome != wealth
- pmiller2 6y agoIndeed, many billionaire and multimillionaire CEOs famously take a salary of $1. Bezos takes a salary of around $80k, IIRC. And, I'm not even sure if Bill Gates is taking a salary at all these days.
- eanzenberg 6y agoIncome is taxed.
- tfehring 6y agoBut the top 1% own much more than 37% of the wealth (and accordingly receive much more than 37% of the financial benefits of government spending) while only paying 37% of the taxes (which fund that government spending).
- Anon1096 6y ago> and accordingly receive much more than 37% of the financial benefits of government spending what?
- UncleMeat 6y agoThe wealthy produce more income via capital gains, which are taxed at lower rates. They also have greater access to tax deferred and tax free options. A married couple of high earners with a good retirement plan at work can put nearly 150,000 annually in accounts that grow tax free.
- glennvtx 6y agoThey will simply leave, or destroy the system.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 6y agoHow do you imagine this would work? Would no one in America found companies anymore? Would the government sit by and allow the to leave? How would companies like health insurance leave? Imagining that the richest can hold a country like the US hostage is preposterous.
- thatcat 6y agoNo, they would try to make a bunch of shell corps and have only 1% in each corp. Distributing the wealth (to other entities that they control less directly). It would essentially just destroy brand recognition for large companies.
- mcv 6y agoThey're welcome to leave. Society doesn't need rich people. Destroying the system would do more damage, but so far it's been their system that enables their accumulation of wealth. There are a lot of poor people who want to destroy that system.
- unethical_ban 6y agoLike Sanders says, when half a million people are homeless, our healthcare system is a joke, and our infrastructure is unmaintained, we have a LOT of work to do. And a lot of spending. There is a far-left opinion that there should be no such thing as a billionaire, that a single human's marginal tax rate should hit 100% at some point. I wouldn't say "never" to the idea at this point.
- malandrew 6y ago> our infrastructure is unmaintained Bernie supporters are generally the least likely to get their hands dirty and do the kind of work necessary to build and maintain infrastructure. Pretty much everyone I meet that does that kind of work is Republican. Not saying this is a universal truth, but it's a somewhat accurate generalization. Source for party affiliation by a sampling of occupations: http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/ http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/
- unethical_ban 6y agoI don't respect your assertion. Not a lot of work to do when it's unfunded. Also looking through your other comments, you seem to question peoples' sources on things without providing any for your own. For posterity, the link was added after I commented and he probably downvoted me.
- mcv 6y agoThis is of course the big issue with infrastructure. The problem isn't the people doing the work, the problem is that they need to get paid for doing the work. Funding infrastructure is a political decision.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoResponding to "our infrastructure is unmaintained" with "Bernie supporters won't be in the jobs actually doing the building because I found this cool infographic showing that bartenders lean Democratic and beer wholesalers lean Republican" is beyond mere non-sequitur into genuine weirdness. It's not like our infrastructure problems are new, or weren't remarked on before 2016. They've been building for decades. They were there in the Obama administration, and the Bush administration, and the Clinton administration, and the other Bush administration, and the Reagan administration. Do you think the problem through all those years was our critical shortage of leftist construction workers?
- sudosysgen 6y agoThey can only do so because of the bottom 80% from which they extract their profit.
- mcv 6y agoApparently they own more than half the wealth, so fairer would mean they need to pay more.